Archive for November 4th, 2005

Does the iPod Nano break easily?

By
Andy
 – November 4, 2005Posted in: Hardware

A month or so ago someone saw me with my iPod Shuffle and said "Ooh, what did you get one of them for? The batteries always go in about 5 minutes". My reply was along the lines of "You don´t exactly know what you´re on about do you? Stop reading the tabloids you pleb!". It must have been Monday.
 
Now I´ve got my iPod Nano someone said. "Why did you get one of them. The screens always break". Well, just to prove that you´re all morons and the world would be a better place if you were all locked away, here´s a scientific test. Since I don´t have a car and don´t plan on getting run over, I should be alright.

Blatant advertising coming up:

PHP Mass Mailing Solution

By
Andy
 – November 4, 2005Posted in: Email & Spam, Web Development

I mentioned before that I was having problems with a mailing script to a large number of recipients. I´ve been looking around for a solution so that I get some mailings done without making everyone mad by getting a dozen or so copies of the email.
 
After searching around for a while I was reading the PHP manual page for the mail() function and read the bit that says "don´t use the mail() function for mass mailing". Apparently it opens a new connection to the server for time it is called and if used in a loop for a large number of people, it can obviously cause problems. The solution it suggests is to use the PEAR::Mail functions that are built into the PHP download as default.

 
I´ve now modified the script to use this and am running a few tests on my own mailboxes with about 12,000 made up addresses. The other advantage of it is that it lets you use and authenticate with any SMTP server so I can use our webhost instead of my poor little overloaded mail server in the office. I´ll post again when I know if it´ll work or not.

Whats up with php.net

By
Andy
 – November 4, 2005Posted in: Domains, Web Development

Seems that the php.net site is having a few difficulties. So’s the PEAR site as well now I come to think about it.

I’ve been getting DNS error pages for the last few days. It’s really annoying since I’m trying to get a massive program coded and need both the sites. I also use the php.net site every day when I can’t quite remember the syntax for a function.

Hopefully it’ll clear up soon.